Contagious Holiness

Description

Honored in 2006 as a “Year’s Best Book for Preachers” by Preaching magazine.

One of humanity’s most basic and common practices—eating meals—was transformed by Jesus into an occasion of divine encounter. In sharing food and drink with his companions, he invited them to share in the grace of God. He revealed his redemptive mission while eating with sinners, repentant and unrepentant alike.

Jesus’ “table fellowship” with sinners in the Gospels has been widely agreed to be historically reliable. However, this consensus has recently been challenged, for example, by the claim that the meals in which Jesus participated took the form of Greco-Roman symposia—or that the “sinners” involved were the most flagrantly wicked within Israel’s society, not merely the ritually impure or those who did not satisfy strict Pharisaic standards of holiness.

In this New Studies in Biblical Theology volume, Craig L. Blomberg engages with the debate and opens up the significance of the topic. He surveys meals in the Old Testament and the intertestamental period, examines all the Gospel texts relevant to Jesus’ eating with sinners, and concludes with contemporary applications.

CONTENTS

Series preface
Author’s preface
Abbreviations

1. The current debate
“Sinners who need no repentance”
Did Jesus really eat with the wicked?

2. Forming friendships but evading enemies
Meals in the Old Testament
The Pentateuch
The historical books
The Wisdom literature
The prophets
Conclusion

3. Contagious impurity
Intertestamental developments
Old Testament Apocrypha
The pseudepigrapha
Qumram and the Dead Sea Scrolls
Greco-Roman symposia
Conclusions

4. Jesus the consummate party animal?
Jesus’ eating with sinners in the Gospels I: material not distinctive to Luke
Levi’s party: Mark 2:13-17 and parallels
Feasting in the wilderness: Mark 6:30-44 and parallels
A repeat miracle: Mark 8:1-10 and parallels
How not to win friends and influence people: Matthew 8:11-16 and parallel
A glutton and a drunkard: Matthew 11:19 and parallels
Tax collectors and prostitutes: Matthew 21:31-32
The joy of new wine: John 2:1-11
A meal of reinstatement: John 21:1-14
Summary and conclusion

5. Pervasive purity
Jesus’ eating with sinners in the Gospels II: material distinctive to Luke
A “sinner in the city”: Luke 7:36-50
Hospitality versus holiness: Luke 10:38-42
A meal turned sour: Luke 11:37-54
A cagey host and a rude guest: Luke 14:1-24
A scandalous summary: Luke 15:1-32
Zacchaeus short-changed? Luke 19:1-10
Cleopas and company: Luke 24:13-35
Summary and conclusion

6 The potential of contemporary Christian meals
Conclusions and applications
Summary
Applications

Bibliography
Index of modern authors
Index of Scripture references
Index of ancient sources